


Nightmares

by entanglednow



Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-12
Updated: 2008-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darkness can be shared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

There's nothing in the darkness but pressure, silent unmoving pressure that holds him like an angry parent, tight and unrelenting. Cain can feel his breath flaring back against his face warm and stifling and unwelcome, damp and smelling like metal.

He can't turn his head, can't turn away and he knows that if he tries, if he fights he'll end up raging against the pressure, screaming and shifting in ways that make everything worse. Tighter and hotter, and every time he's certain that he'll suffocate. That he'll choke to death on his own crushed exhales, and he doesn't know whether that's a blessing or a curse.

If he doesn't control himself he will go mad, if he doesn't hold it he'll go mad, and there's no leash to gnaw on, just metal, endless metal under his fingers and he wants to push, wants to force his way free. But his instincts will break him, Break him utterly.

He can't stop though, he can't resist it, it's like a twitch inside, and he knows no matter how slowly he breathes, no matter how carefully he counts past each moment, no matter how dark it is when he closes his eyes. He can't hold it forever.

The scream builds in his throat with all the inevitability of an ocean wave.

He lunges for the surface-

His hand is caught mid-swing, and for a second he's blinking in half darkness, breathing too fast through a dry throat and he's cold and sweating and it's like every other time.

Only he's not alone.

Glitch has his hand in narrow fingers, cold and not entirely still, twitching, though he's focused entirely on Cain.

He's folded on the side of Cain's bed, knees tucked underneath him like he's fallen there. His free hand is holding a lamp in an absent, half-hearted sort of way.

"Are you alright Cain?"

Cain isn't sure, tendrils of panic are still curling through his blood like poison, sharp and unshakeable for all that he's no longer trapped in a metal coffin.

He nods anyway, drags a hand through his damp hair.

Glitch's arm swings sideways, settles the lamp on the nearest flat surface, before easing back into a sit.

His face is impossibly pale in the darkness, tilted curiously. There's an intensity to his expression that's brief but real, before it fragments into a frown.

"That didn't look fun at all. I wasn't sure whether to wake you. I couldn't remember whether you're supposed to wake people who're dreaming or not." Glitch considers this while Cain swallows down the last flares of panic.

"How did you get here?" he asks, and his voice sounds awful, like it's half gone.

"You were yelling," Glitch says quietly. "I heard you from the hallway."

Which considering it's almost completely dark is briefly confusing.

"What were you doing in the hallway?"

Glitch shrugs elegantly.

"I'm fairly certain I was lost, and then I heard you and figured you'd most certainly have a better idea than me where I was supposed to be...at what is apparently a very unsociable hour. Though don't ask me when that happened."

Glitch's fingers twitch and Cain realises that he's still holding them, tighter than is probably polite. He lets them go and Glitch doesn't protest or try to hold on, he just lets Cain's fingers slip over the tips of his own.

It leaves his hand looking pale and empty, balanced on his own knee.

"I don't actually," Cain says, then clears his useless throat and tries again. "I never saw DG show you to your room."

Glitch's face flits between disappointment, concern and confusion, before finally settling on acceptance.

"This place is far too big, I could wander half of it and then forget all about it, I have a terrible sense of direction you know."

"I remember," Cain shifts up a little, drags a leg up, just to have something to hold on to, something solid.

"So how they expect me to find anything...it's maddening."

"Though you were the chief advisor," Cain says, in what manages to finally be a sensible conversational voice. "I have to assume your rooms would be somewhere nice."

"You'd think wouldn't you," Glitch's expression is briefly pleased, a raised eyebrow and a nod suggest a self-assurance that comes and goes in brief flashes but always manages to make his smile just a touch wider.

"What were you dreaming about?" Glitch asks curiously, and his expression is just curious. Like he's following the threads wherever they take him.

Cain doesn't even bother contemplating whether to lie, or push the question aside. The room is cold and unfamiliar and there are some things that can only be banished by the murmur of voices.

"Being buried alive," he says at last and it sounds so simple, but Glitch tips his head to the side and exhales, wearing that expression he sometimes has when he's paused between one thought and the next, or when he forgets and repeats himself.

"I don't dream," Glitch says after a while. "Or I don't remember them when I wake up, and though I'm not sure whether I had good dreams before I don't think I would now. I don't think the long coats were very hospitable to their guests, and as for the other part, the part where they cut my brain out-" He lifts a hand, then changes his mind and lowers it again. "Well I don't think I'd want to remember that in the dark, on my own. I especially wouldn't want to remember it while I was asleep and couldn't be sure whether it was real or not," Glitch visibly winces. "Though that wouldn't be dreams would it, that would be the other things."

"Nightmares," Cain says quietly.

Glitch nods, as if he's satisfied with the word, like now he's been given its name he can take it apart and put it back together.

So he can know all its secrets and not be afraid of it anymore.

"I mean, I have enough trouble remembering things that _did_ happen without adding things that _didn't_ into the mix, and nightmares-" Glitch blinks, as if he's actually taking the time to think about it. "All the broken bits inside my head trying to sort themselves out while I'm sleeping, I don't like the idea of that at all. Not at all."

Glitch's voice is briefly a picture of horror at the thought.

A second later he laughs.

"Though sometimes I wake up on the verge of having a really good idea, but it's almost always gone as soon as I try and think about it...not that that only happens when I'm asleep mind."

Glitch frowns at the wall, though the frown gradually drifts into something amused, suggesting his brain has gone off on a tangent.

Cain is content to watch him for a few moments. Until it occurs to him that he still doesn't know exactly how late it is.

"What time is it?"

Glitch swivels to face him.

"I don't know," he admits, then looks around to see if there are any clocks within view. When it becomes clear that there aren't he shrugs apologetically. "I don't know."

"It doesn't feel close to morning."

"Oh I don't think it is, it's still very dark."

"You went outside?"

"I found a window...don't ask me where but I found one, not too long ago, so probably wandering distance from here, in some direction or another." Glitch frowns. "That wasn't really helpful at all was it?"

Glitch turns his head round, as if to get clarification on all possible directions, and Cain leans forward far enough to hook a hand round his elbow and stop him falling off of the bed.

"Shouldn't you have been asleep as well, rather than wandering the palace?"

Glitch opens his mouth, then frowns and shakes his head, which instantly makes Cain curious because he doesn't think he's ever seen Glitch stop himself talking on purpose before.

"What is it?"

"This place may have been my home, and it probably should be familiar, but the little flashes-" Glitch rubs his fingers together in a vague helpless way and Cain suspects the gesture is tied to a memory he no longer possesses.

"The little memories I get, they're not good, they're not the sort of things I want to look at too closely."

He stops, seems to hover on the edge of something that can't be good. Cain can't think of a single thing to say to distract him out of it, not a thing. So he slides a foot down, knocks Glitch out of the strange pause.

Glitch looks at him, as if for some sort of nudge, some verbal prod in the right direction, and Cain doesn't want to make him ask.

"You were talking about your room."

Glitch nods.

"My room, I was...is this my room or your room. No that's a stupid question clearly since _you're_ in the bed it's your room."

Glitch briefly looks utterly bewildered, as though he's found a complex flaw in that observation but can't quite put his finger on it.

Cain raises an eyebrow at him, and Glitch raises an eyebrow back.

They balance on the edge of that moment for a long second before Cain is forced into a short noise that might just be laughter and Glitch looks triumphant.

"I'm fairly sure I did start the evening in a room now that I think of it. This place may have a queen and a king and princesses, good princesses, but it's not exactly homey. But I was in a room, and I'm sure it was very nice, but it was also very empty and...creepy. Big and empty and creepy.

Glitch looks around Cain's own room, as if to judge whether it deserves the same description. The flickering lamp light doesn't help its cause. There are too many corners, too much history and none of it recently good.

"Isn't that usual with old palaces?" Cain asks.

Glitch's head twists from his perusal to look at Cain again.

"What?"

"Big and empty and creepy?"

Glitch makes a noise and nods.

"Exactly, it is, I was just thinking the same thing!"

Glitch shivers and Cain doesn't think it has everything to do with the ghosts of old memories.

He catches Glitches fingers and finds them...not quite cold but certainly sliding their way there. He shifts the covers over until he can toss one round his narrow shoulders.

"Oh...thank you!" Glitch fusses with it until it's providing maximum coverage and minimum style, which Cain can't help but smirk at.

Once it's done and Glitch stops concentrating the thing falls straight out of its carefully constructed folds.

Cain can't help but think about the sensation that comes when you fall asleep after a dream. The way all the details just blurred into nothing and all you have left is a vague sense of what used to be there.

He wonders if that's how Glitch feels all the time.

Glitch is watching him, and Cain realises abruptly that he was staring.

"It's not as bad as it seems sometimes," Glitch says quietly. "Living in a perpetual state of discombobulation."

Cain attempts to have no expression at all, he thinks he fails because Glitch shrugs.

"I've had a lot of time to get used to it."

Cain raises an eyebrow.

"You know, I get the feeling you were kind of a smart ass."

Glitch surprises him when his whole face curves into a grin, all teeth and mischief.

"I like to think so," he pats himself, then tugs at a thread that's gradually escaping from the brocade of his jacket. "And I'm almost certain that I used to have a nicer wardrobe."

"I definitely think those clothes have seen better days,"

Glitch makes a noise that's both agreeable and vaguely disgusted, pokes a finger in one of the many running seams.

"Don't you ever take them off?!" Cain asks curiously.

"Oh I have a tendency to wander and it's very awkward when you leave your clothes somewhere and can't remember where. It's easier to just keep them where I can see them, which is mostly...wearing them."

"Still, maybe you should think about replacing them?" Cain hooks two fingers in the shoulder seam, which is trying valiantly to keep the sleeve attached. But for how long is anyone's guess.

"I keep them because they were mine, they were the only thing I had that was mine. They'd come from wherever I'd come from and that was...that was something at the time. When I remembered. They were familiar. I didn't know my own name but I knew my own clothes, isn't that just about the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?"

Cain thinks it's more sad than ridiculous. They've all had their pieces carved out of them, and they've all clung to what they got to keep.

But Glitch wasn't so much carved cleanly as he was cut to ribbons. Pieces still hanging loose with no beginnings and no ends. It's amazing he's still a person at all. And a good person at that, a whole person no matter what anyone else says. Complex and willing and curious, all sensation and emotion without being stupidly reckless.

Cain thinks that's more than enough.

"No," he says. "I don't think it sounds ridiculous."

Glitch smiles, it's crooked and open and pleased for a hundred reasons Cain doesn't think he'll ever know.

There's a long moment of silence. Glitch fidgets with the embroidered corner of the bedspread, sighs quietly then works on tucking his knee under a long length of material.

"In the dream I'm trapped in the suit," Cain says quietly.

Glitch looks up at him, surprised and curious, his hands go still in his lap, come to rest on his own thighs.

"It's always night, it's always dark and I have almost no sense of time so it lasts forever. I'm standing in the dark listening to my own breathing, absolutely certain I'll never see daylight again. Suffocating in my own breath, my own hair. And in the dream I'm always so close to breaking, to screaming my damn head off, to going crazy right in that suit of armour. It's just an endless loop of holding it until I snap."

Cain's fingers are digging into the covers in restless little movements and he forces himself to stop, forces himself to look at Glitch.

Who's looking at him with an expression that's far too complicated to read.

Cain used to be good at reading expressions.

"Did it happen like that?" Glitch asks carefully

Cain swallows and he hates that it's not easy, he hates it.

"Yeah, yeah it happened like that. Sometimes in the dark I feel like I'm suffocating all over again. Because no one's going to let a crazy person out."

"Except another crazy person," Glitch says sensibly, then slides a hand over his mouth, as if he could drag the words back if it were physically possible.

But the observation is true enough that Cain can't help the snort of laughter.

Glitch slides his hand away and gives him a sheepish grin.

Then looks around, as if noticing for the first time where his is.

"It really is very late, possibly even late enough to be early and I really shouldn't be babbling at you. I should go- Where was I going?"

Cain wonders if he should tell him that he doesn't actually know.

"You'll never find your way back, you'll just wander until you get tired enough to sleep wherever you stop."

"It wouldn't be the first time," Glitch admits. He starts untangling himself from the cover, which would have been a far simpler job if he hadn't spent the last ten minutes tucking bits of it underneath his various limbs.

Cain glances over at the other side of the bed.

It's a royal suite, the bed is more than big enough for two people, and they didn't even have to know each other that well.

The alternative is sending Glitch back out into the cold, to get lost, and to send himself back into the dark.

He can't do either.

"You could stay," he says simply. "Rather than go back out and get lost wandering. If you catch pneumonia DG will never let me forget it."

Glitch's eyebrow does its curious flick that Cain suspects is probably surprise.

"Are you sure, I know you like your space?" Glitch gestures, as if to demonstrate how much lovely space Cain currently owns.

"There's space enough to share."

Glitch doesn't move though, he fidgets instead.

"It's just," he pulls a face that somehow manages to convey complication. "You know that I get confused, more than most, and if I wake up next to you I might get very confused."

Which is only to be expected really.

Cain wonders if he should point out that that's something that can happen to everyone else too.

"I'll explain," Cain promises and Glitch sighs relief.

"Before I do anything embarrassing," Glitch adds.

Cain nods.

Glitch works his coat and shirt off in one fluid movement, then knocks his boots off before slithering over the other side of the bed.

There's a lot of bed to slither over.

Cain shifts back down, legs finding the cold spaces they'd occupied before.

There's another, quieter shift of fabric to his right and the covers move, sending cold air trickling across his stomach and thighs.

He send a hand out, and turns off the lamp.

The darkness is absolute.

"Are you really glad you don't have nightmares?" Cain asks.

There's a quiet sigh and the covers fidget for a moment.

"It's hard to know what you miss and what you don't when you can't really remember anything," Glitch admits.

Which, of course, is the exact opposite of Cain, who remembers everything and can't stop.

He stares at the ceiling, even though he can't see it. He hates staring into the dark but he does it anyway.

His hand shifts, tries to find a loose piece of sheet that he can drag into his fist. That he can use as an anchor to the present, something real.

His fingers knock against skin instead.

He blinks in the darkness.

Glitch hand twists round, and there's a curious pause before long fingers very, very carefully tangle round his own.

Cain sighs, because really this isn't the most mature way to deal with the problem.

But he's asleep before he thinks of something better.


End file.
